Bernanke's Blame Game Sends Fingers Flying

The biggest case yet of the pot calling the kettle black.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is back at it again, pointing the crisis finger at everyone but himself. To be sure, there are plenty of congressional clowns deserving of a Babe Ruth-style point, but the biggest one should be directed at Bernanke himself.

Regulatory failure, not lax monetary policy, was responsible for the housing bubble and subsequent financial crisis of the last decade, Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, said in a speech on Sunday.

"Stronger regulation and supervision aimed at problems with underwriting practices and lenders' risk management would have been a more effective and surgical approach to constraining the housing bubble than a general increase in interest rates," Mr. Bernanke, whose nomination for a second term awaits Senate confirmation, said in remarks to the American Economic Association.

Technical models based on historical trends in United States housing prices and monetary policy show that home prices rose much faster than interest rates alone would have predicted, Mr. Bernanke said.

He also argued that trends in other countries demonstrated a "quite weak" connection between housing price appreciation and monetary policy.

The aggressive monetary policy response in 2002 and 2003 was motivated by two principal factors. First, although the recession technically ended in late 2001, the recovery remained quite weak and "jobless" into the latter part of 2003. Real gross domestic product (GDP), which normally grows above trend in the early stages of an economic expansion, rose at an average pace just above 2% in 2002 and the first half of 2003, a rate insufficient to halt continued increases in the unemployment rate, which peaked above 6% in the first half of 2003.

Second, the Federal Open Market Committee's policy response also reflected concerns about a possible unwelcome decline in inflation. Taking note of the painful experience of Japan, policymakers worried that the United States might sink into deflation and that, as one consequence, the FOMC's target interest rate might hit its zero lower bound, limiting the scope for further monetary accommodation. FOMC decisions during this period were informed by a strong consensus among researchers that, when faced with the risk of hitting the zero lower bound, policymakers should lower rates preemptively, thereby reducing the probability of ultimately being constrained by the lower bound on the policy interest rate ...

All efforts should be made to strengthen our regulatory system to prevent a recurrence of the crisis, and to cushion the effects if another crisis occurs. However, if adequate reforms are not made, or if they are made but prove insufficient to prevent dangerous buildups of financial risks, we must remain open to using monetary policy as a supplementary tool for addressing those risks -- proceeding cautiously and always keeping in mind the inherent difficulties of that approach. Clearly, we still have much to learn about how best to make monetary policy and to meet threats to financial stability in this new era. Maintaining flexibility and an open mind will be essential for successful policymaking as we feel our way forward.

You'll have to read the full text to see, but amazingly Bernanke is sticking with his Savings Glut Theory as the reason for the housing bubble, as if massive credit expansion in the US and monetary printing in China somehow constitute a "savings glut".

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